Dehydration Toilet Programme

Programme Overview

The Sago Dehydration Toilet programme offers coastal communities a sanitation solution that overcomes the challenges of high water table environments to provide a waterless, above-ground, permanent sanitation solution at an extended family scale.

The programme works with local communities to undertake detailed community consultation, collaborative construction and ongoing support, monitoring and maintenance for a period of 18 months.

Suitable Communities

The programme is suitable for coastal communities throughout PNG who experience both water and sanitation challenges and who are prepared to be proactive in addressing their situation.

Programme Objectives

The programme objectives are as follows:

1. Improve village health by lifting the standards of water and sanitation systems in part of the village.

2. Empower a proactive community that needs water and sanitation improvements and is eager to implement change by forming a collaborative partnership.

3. Undertake an incremental approach to addressing water and sanitation issues in the community by commencing work with 10 extended families for an initial trial of the the Dehydration Toilet programme.

4. Address the greatest need first with a ‘triage’ approach that identifies and works with extended families who have the least access to water and sanitation.

If the programme proves successful the next step may be working with the families in the next most needy situation.

5. Build community capacity to monitor and maintain facilities by encouraging the establishment of local water and sanitation committees to form key decisions, drive the project, organise family financial contributions and continue to monitor and maintain the facilities.

6. Strengthen community awareness of the health benefits stemming from a year-round supply of potable water and formalised sanitation solutions.

7. Maintain support for the community over an 18 month period to track community acceptance, address maintenance issues and identify areas of potential further improvement.

8. Explore the future potential for further Water Hubs and Dehydration Toilets throughout the community to move toward community-wide, year-round access to drinking water and safe sanitation.

Advantages of Dehydration Toilets

PNG’s high water table environments, such as its coastal communities, therefore require an alternative solution that can overcome the environmental conditions, satisfy performative requirements and adequately respond to cultural considerations. Sago Network, in partnership with the pilot community of Barakau, has achieved significant results with a dehydration toilet system with the following advantages identified:

• Separation of waste from human contact is achieved by containing all waste within a sealed plastic chamber until pathogens are dehydrated and broken down over a dormant six month period.

• Containment of harmful pathogens from the environment is also achieved by holding the waste within a chamber until rendered inert and safe to be disposed of back to the environment. The system thus overcomes the challenges that coastal communities face with their high water table environments.

• Quality construction is a result of a permanent system with chambers that are used, emptied and re-used. The structure can thus be built once and built with quality without any need to be relocated in the future.

• Appropriate siting is also the result of the permanent system whereby the most culturally and environmentally appropriate location can be selected for the toilet’s location given there is no need to relocate the facility in the future.

• Maintenance of the system is relatively straightforward if family members undertake the appropriate training.

Dehydration toilets therefore represent a significant opportunity for PNG’s coastal communities as an ‘improved’ sanitation facility that is a permanent, high-quality, low maintenance solution that overcomes the challenges inherent in high water table environments.

Dehydration Toilet: Key Elements

Key elements of the system are as follows:

• 10 x dehydration toilets owned by individual families with an average size of 12-15 people with the whole system therefore serving 120-150 people.

• 10 x hand washing stations associated with each toilet using water collected from the permanent roof and stored in a water tank.

A programme that provides on-going community support and facility maintenance for 18 months post completion.

The Sanitation Challenge

Open-Air Defecation

Sago Network’s Dehydration Toilets address the lack of access to safe sanitation solutions which afflict many of PNG’s coastal communities in which formal facilities are scarce. Open air-defecation is commonplace and, regardless of whetherit is within a vegetation or the sea, results in faecal-oral transmission from waste to human food via flies.

High Water Table Challenges

The most affordable and accessible sanitation solution, the ventilated improved pit toilet, provides limited potential for coastal communities who have the added challenges of a high water table environment. This environmental reality limits the effective depth of pits, poses water table contamination risks, commits families to an often annual burden of excavating a new pit and is limited by the number of socially and environmentally acceptable locations in increasingly dense villages.

Dehydration Toilet: Technical Solution

Sago Network’s Dehydration Toilets have been designed to serve an extended family of 12 people and provide a permanent sanitation solution for village families.

How the System Works

The Dehydration Toilets use two large, ventilated chambers to store and decompose human waste. Users experience simply a standard toilet seat and add ash after each use. One chamber is used for

6 months, is then decommissioned for 6 months while the waste dehydrates, during which the second chamber is used. Atthe end of the process, responsible family members simply remove a sandy-type substance from the first chamber which is safe to be used as garden fertiliser. Toilet chambers are sized to ensure an extended family of 12 people are comfortably catered for.

Quality Construction

Longevity of the facility is assured from the durable materials used together with quality construction methods and details.

Certified Design

The design of the Dehydration Toilet comes with design certification of its engineering with a structural engineering team ensuring that it withstands cyclones.

Water Supply Programme

Sago Network has undertaken a number of water supply programmes with communities who struggle to access reliable drinking-quality water. Villages throughout Morobe Province, in particular, often have decommissioned water wells that were constructed in the early 1970s. With the concrete shafts still often in good condition, reconstruction of the pump stands and retrofitting of high-quality cast iron hand pumps have proven to be a cost effective method of reconnecting communities to reliable water sources. Water testing performed in the field is undertaken using industry-leading IDEXX equipment to establish both baseline data and final water quality to ensure potable quality water. The involvement of both village Water Committee members and equipment suppliers has proven to connect communities to industry to ensure skills and the network required to keep the water pumps maintained.

Pit Toilet Programme

Programme Overview

Sago Network's Pit Toilet Programme works with communities who who are committed to lifting the standard of their sanitation facilities and who require a cost effective sanitation solution. Critically, however, this option is only open to communities who do not face the challenges of a high water table environment due to both the ineffective depth of toilets and potential water contamination risks in these conditions. The programme is centred around a low-cost toilet design and is delivered through a supportive and holistic approach that also sees hygiene awareness training undertaken with village children.

Supporting Local Craft

The design of the toilets utilises a small number of purchased materials but also places a significant focus on local material and traditional craft. In this way cost is reduced, local culture is proudly supported and the project becomes a ’two-way learning experience’ between local people and the project team. Importantly, purchased material is strategically kept to a total cost of approximately 92 Kina, a level almost always within reach of a village family.

Capacity-Building Objective

The programme aims to be capacity building in two key ways:

• Technical know-how is built throughout the collaborative construction process wherein local families are taught how to construct the toilet using the concrete slab mould.

• Financial capacity is assured as families fund 100% of the material costs by purchasing or otherwise procuring all materials involved in the project (Approximately 92 Kina).

On-Going Change

At the conclusion of each programme Sago Network often enters into an on-going agreement with the community to loan both a toolbox of equipment and the slab mould so that toilets can continue to be built by families. The loan is extended each year in perpetuity based on demonstrated use. In this way the programme collaborates with local communities to show that Ventilated Improved Pit Toilets can be afforded and built by community members themselves. In this way the programme aims to catalyse positive on-going change and village health improvement.

Hygiene Awareness Programme

Sago Network approaches the built infrastructure, such as new dehydration toilets, with an awareness of the importance of the soft infrastructure that underpins successful ongoing use. Training programme often focus on hygiene and regularly include:

• Hygiene Awareness training to ensure that the issues being addressed are clearly reiterated. This often focuses on open-air defecation practices that result in faecal oral transmission of waste to humans via flies or direct contact and the resulting health implications that stem therefrom.

• Toilet Tips to ensure that all community members are reminded of key things to keep in mind when using a toilet, such as ensuring that hand washing is routine and regular.

Sago Network adopts a flexible and creative approach to communicating key messages such as the above:

• Informal skits or plays are also often performed by team members and community participants a method of connecting with kids and, through them, reminding parents of the important principles that support a healthy village.

Water Hub Programme

Programme Overview

The Sago Water Hub programme offers communities a water supply solution that overcomes the often three-month dry season that many communities face by providing an above-ground, minimal maintenance, water supply solution at an extended family and neighbourhood scale.

The programme works with local communities to undertake detailed community consultation, collaborative construction and ongoing support, monitoring and maintenance for a period of 18 months.

Suitable Communities

The programme is suitable for communities throughout PNG but particularly coastal communities who experience both water and sanitation challenges and who are prepared to be proactive in addressing their situation.

Programme Objectives

The programme objectives are as follows:

1. Improve village health by lifting the standards of water and sanitation systems in part of the village.

2. Empower a proactive community that needs water and sanitation improvements and is eager to implement change by forming a collaborative partnership.

3. Undertake an incremental approach to addressing water and sanitation issues in the community by commencing work with a specific number of extended families as an initial trial of the programme with 6 extended families.

4. Address the greatest need first with a ‘triage’ approach that identifies and works with extended families who have the least access to water and sanitation. If the programme proves successful the next step may be working with the families in the next most needy situation.

5. Build community capacity to monitor and maintain facilities by encouraging the establishment of local water and sanitation committees to form key decisions, drive the project, organise family financial contributions and continue to monitor and maintain the facilities.

6. Strengthen community awareness of the health benefits stemming from a year-round supply of potable water and formalised sanitation solutions.

7. Maintain support for the community over an 18 month period to track community acceptance, address maintenance issues and identify areas of potential further improvement.

8. Explore the future potential for further Water Hubs and Dehydration Toilets throughout the community to move toward community-wide, year-round access to drinking water and safe sanitation.

Advantages of Water Supply via Water Harvesting

PNG’s high rainfall environment provides many communities with the opportunity of harnessing rain water as a primary or complementary water supply system. Sago Network has been developing designs for local rainwater catchment and storage systems with the following advantages identified:

• Harvesting rainwater via roofing systems and detaining it in water tanks before it enters the ground, removes the need for water pumps or other mechanical or hydraulic equipment to again access the water. Comparative to wells and pumps, roofs and tanks constitute a simple, low- tech, low maintenance and cost effective water supply system.

• Rainwater is an uncontaminated water source and, if storage systems are appropriately maintained, will provide water that, unlike streams and rivers, can be guaranteed to be potable (drinking) quality.

• Rainwater harvesting, with their ability to capture and store a significant volume of water, can help sustain communities through dry seasons or alleviate some pressure during drought-like conditions that have recently been experienced.

• Rainwater systems can be deployed in addition to existing systems, thus complementing rather than supplanting existing systems and thereby adding to the resilience of community water supplies by providing more than one water supply solution.

Water Hub: Key Elements

Key elements of the system are as follows:

• Two large roof planes collect rainwater throughout the year and store it within six 25,000L water tanks, 150,000L in total.

• Volumes adequate to ensure provision of 20L per person per day (the WHO water usage objective) for a period of 3 months.

• The six tanks are owned and accessed by extended families with an assumed average size of 12-15 people with the whole system serving 72-90 people.

• A social gathering space, or Haus Win, protected by the collecting roofs above to form a positive communal space that could be used by the neighbourhood for various types of gathering, including meetings of the water committee formed to manage and maintain the project.

The Water Challenge

Dry Season Water Security

Sago Network’s Water Hub addresses the lack of access to a year-round supply of drinking water which afflicts PNG’s coastal communities which are subject to a dry season each year. Regardless of whether village communities source their water throughout most of the year from running streams, groundwater sources or rainwater tanks, the annual dry season often reduces these abundant water supplies to critically low or non-existent levels.

Water Quality Issues

This dry season water security issue is further compounded as the density of villages increases with more people claiming access to the same water sources. This density also affects the quality of drinking water sources with more people depending upon natural flows of water for, not only drinking purposes, but for human bathing and waste disposal.

Water Hub: Technical Solution

Sago Network’s Water Hub has been designed to serve a local village neighbourhood of 6 extended families and is intended to supplement existing water supplies to ensure a continuity of water supply throughout the dry season.

How the System Works

The Water Hub harvests rainwater using two large roof planes throughout the 9 months of the year when rain is abundant and collects and stores it within large-capacity detention tanks for use throughout the dry season months. Tank capacities are sized to ensure that 6 extended families will have their average daily water requirements satisfied by the system for a 3 month period.

Quality Construction

Longevity of the system is assured from the durable materials used together with quality construction methods.

Certified Design

The design of the Water Hub comes with design certification of its engineering witha structural engineering team ensuringthat it withstands cyclones and hydraulic engineering calculating all plumbing involved in the system.

Water Hub: Social Dimension

The design of the Water Hub incorporates an understanding of the social context of PNG’s villages in two important ways:

Water Hub Doubles as Social Hub

The large roof planes of the structure not only serves as a water catchment system but doubles as a protected, social gathering space underneath. Borrowing from PNG’s traditional Haus Win, the Water Hub uses its protecting roof to form a social space at one end of the structure where small community groups can gather and meet, such as the Water Committee who maintain the Hub.

Family Ownership of Water Resources

The design stores the rainwater across 6 tanks, one for each of the families it serves. In this way, the roofs which collect the rainwater are communal but water tanks are owned and managed by individual families who are responsible for the appropriate use of the water.

Sago Studio - University Student Programme

When a community stands to gain from an intensive collaboration with a larger team, Sago Network undertakes its community development work in collaboration with university students as part of the Sago Studio programme. Since 2011 design-build programmes in the field have worked in partnership with local communities to collaboratively plan, design and construct a series of programmes including:

For communities, Sago Studio aims to provide capacity-building opportunities for communities who build project ownership and on-going maintenance skills by actively driving and participating in each design-build experience.

For students, it is a unique opportunity for cross-cultural learning between Australian and Papua New Guinean students and the communities who host the programme. The in-field design and construction process employing often a mixture of traditional local craft and imported building culture also proves to be a formative experience for team members.

Sago Studio 2018 has just been completed and worked with the communities of Tutu Beach and Hanuabada in Central Province in February 2018 to address sanitation challenges being faced by both of these satellite villages to Port Moresby. More info via the Sago Studio 2018 tab above.